A Date with Death: the Dangers of Dating Apps
Dating apps started as a way for people to meet potential lovers online with no previous personal connection. A simple swipe right, or a swipe left. Who would have thought one swipe could really hold the balance of life or death. In reality, the idea of dating apps is creepy, they are home to catfishes, predators, pedophiles, and cold-blooded killers.
Dating apps are harmful to teens and adults alike from a safety aspect. Many have seen the videos that have been surfacing on Tik Tok from the Grace Millane case back in December of 2020. Grace met Jesse Kempson on Tinder, the two arranged a date, and after the date Jesse brought her back to his hotel room where he killed her and discarded the body in a suitcase. She was treated like trash, tricked, used, and killed without any reason or motive behind it. These are some of the people that hideout on apps like this. In their pictures they look just like everyone else, but in reality, they have secrets to hide that you might not know until it’s too late. This is the ugly truth, and you might be reading this and saying “yeah but that won’t happen to me”, do you think Grace thought it was going to happen to her?
Apps like this that force you to base an entire person off of just 2-5 images on their profile cause major strain on someone’s mental state. Let’s not lie to ourselves, about half of you reading this probably have or had at least a Tinder profile at one point, no shame, it was a trend and it still kind of is. When making said Tinder profile did you spend a good 20 minutes scrolling through your camera roll to find the perfect pictures that made you look good or like the life of the party. Then you wait for the notifications to roll in from all your admirers, but what if they don’t? Say your friends are all matching with hot guys and girls and you aren’t, it isn’t the best feeling in the world, to say the least. People unfortunately use dating apps for validation and when they don’t get matches you start to worry if maybe you’re not worthy of attention or you’re not good-looking enough, why is that? We all want to be loved and accepted, it is just human nature, but a dating app is not the place to go looking for validation, let alone your soul mate.
A recent study showed that only about 20% of online dating app users actually find real relationships through these platforms. You have a better chance of meeting your future lover in the Walmart parking lot than on Tinder, and honestly, Mr. or Mrs. Walmart parking lot is probably a much better option than someone who just spent 20 minutes using the same pickup line on 40 different girls before you on some app.